Audio headphones are well known in the art. Existing headphones have typically been developed to meet specific cost/price targets. As a result, headphones offered at low to moderate prices are not carefully designed or tuned in such a manner as to optimize their acoustic performance. This is particularly problematic when the headphone is “closed” or “semi-closed,” with a cup or similar structure encircling and fully or partially containing a volume behind the audio driver. In these devices, an improperly executed design typically allows the cup to act as an echo chamber, smearing the time domain response of the system and resulting in unpleasant, high distortion audio with significant non-linearity in the frequency response and a characteristic “closed” sound. These distortions reduce the fidelity and quality of the sound presented to a listener.
Conventional headphone and speaker enclosures are designed with a fixed volume intended to optimize performance for a “perfect” driver. However, loudspeakers and headphone transducers may have a wide range of operating parameters that stray from the optimum design point and may underperform when installed in an enclosure optimized for a specific set of operating parameters.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art to address the above-described, as well as other, problems so as to provide higher quality sound in a low to moderately priced headphone or speaker device.